


Let You Be Broken Open

by Damalia (Achrya)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Depressing, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 02:07:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5272559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achrya/pseuds/Damalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean was Marco’s. His best friend, his lover, his Omega, and it was perfect. But then Marco is dead and Jean belongs to no one and he might as well be dead too. Maybe he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let You Be Broken Open

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: I remain the worst kind of ABO trash. I’ve come to terms.  
> Warnings: ANGST. Death. Non-con elements. Suicidal thoughts/wishes. No happy ending.

When Marco dies Jean dies too.

His body didn’t know it and the people around him didn’t know it, though he could feel them watching him, waiting for it. In cases like theirs, a pair bonded as closely as they were, it was almost expected for the one left behind to just give up and not wake up one day.

To just die.

Oh they talked to him, cajoled him into eating and working and all of the things that came with continuing to exist, tried so very hard to keep him alive, but it didn’t matter because he had already died.

At first he felt like he was walking around with his chest cracked open, ribs pulled out and skin peeled back, bleeding out everything he had inside of him. It hurt to breathe, to move, to open his eyes and realize his body was still pushing itself. He felt like it would never stop or lessen, just a huge gaping wound that he would carry until he died.

Which he hoped wouldn’t take long. He even joined Eren’s little suicidal crusade to help speed up the process because the slow creeping death was almost too much to bare. And yet killing himself seemed like something Marco wouldn’t have approved of so no matter how much he thought about it, how many times he thought about just not reaching for the next hook hold and falling to break on the ground, he kept swinging.

He didn’t die.

People fell around him often but he kept going, a useless empty omega who couldn’t stop himself from bleeding out. Who woke up with his throat raw from screaming and begging for something that just wasn’t come back. Who had a body too stupid to realize that they weren’t supposed to keep going and that if they had been with Marco like they were supposed to they would have just stopped already.

Maybe the bond hadn’t been as deep as they thought.

Maybe he hadn’t loved Marco as much as he’d thought.

Maybe he was broken.

It didn’t matter because Marco was dead and there was no fixing that so what did it matter what had or hadn’t been before?

Before when Jean had been Marco’s. Not just his best friend, not just the guy he shared a bed with, not just the person he choose to wear his mark, not just his mate, and not just his omega. No, he had been _Marco’s_.

For a time his whole life had been about being with Marco. He’d wanted nothing more than to keep close, to be in contact, wanted Marco to live in his skin.

Marco had smiled and crooked a finger and Jean had always scrambled to come. He’d walked and Jean had followed, talked and Jean had listened, commanded and Jean had obeyed, and it had been the most perfect existence he could have imagined.

Sometimes in the quiet of night he’d sit at Marco’s feet, pressed against the alpha’s leg while long fingers stroked his hair and he’d never so much as cared that the others in the dorm could see them or what they might think.

For everyone else he was Jean the hot head, Jean who swung before he thought, Jean who got under people’s skin and drove them crazy and delighted in doing so.

For Marco he was something else. He let himself be needy and wanting and giving and eager to please where those traits had never existed in him before and didn’t exist for anyone else. He was happy to be owned, to belong to Marco, and he hadn’t let himself imagine a world where it might not be true anything.

But that was the world and he accepted that. He didn’t imagine that Marco was out there, somehow alive. He’d given up (consciously) begging whatever god clearly didn’t exist (or hated humanity) to undo what had been done. He had finally let go of the bits and pieces of Marco he carried with him.

The honey drenched scent of Marco faded from his skin eventually. The mark Marco had bitten into the spot where neck met shoulder followed right behind it and like that there was nothing left of Marco in the world but ashes that had blown to parts unknown.

So really there was nothing at all.

People offered to step in where Marco had once been.It started with the others from their trainee group. Armin, Reiner, and Bertolt made offers, were there when his heats struck and waited patiently just in case, but he never accepted. He understood what they were doing, trying to keep him safe and healthy because Marco had been their friend and they felt like that was their duty as alphas.

Then there were others and it was to be expected. He was an omega of fertile age, a more than competent soldier, not unattractive (apparently), and word had spread, stories from other trainees, about what a perfect submissive omega he’d been to his now dead alpha. It was something that appealed to the kind of people who were so far from being what Marco had been that it was amazing.

He turned them all down and some went away silently and some didn’t and those ones he told to fuck off. And some would and some wouldn't, unable to deal with a mouthy omega rejecting them, and those ones he would fight. He didn’t care much for the fighting one way or the other, and it was strange to feel like he was still pouring out all he was even when his fists were flying.

He’d fought before, hadn’t he? And he’d always felt the high that came with the shouting and the rush that came with shoving and fighting. He’d always secretly enjoyed having Marco cluck at him and sit in his lap to patch him up, murmuring his annoyance at Jean’s antics with heart stopping kindness, smoothing over scrapes and bruises with careful gentle fingers, and kissing him sweetly.

But that was gone now and he wasn’t sure why he bothered fighting at all. There was no point to prove, no anger to release, not even some illusion of virtue to protect.  

One time there was someone, an alpha, a little bigger and a little faster and he’d lost and the worst part was that it did nothing for him. Didn’t stop the hurt that had taken over everything, didn’t make him angry or sad, didn’t make him any more or less empty. Someone else being in the spaces only Marco had been should have done something, should have made him sick inside, but he couldn't even manage that. 

Maybe that had been for Marco once but Marco was gone and everything that had been his was gone so why not his stubbornly living body as well. 

Even the shameful bite mark, dark and obvious on his neck for all the world to see, and the anger from the others on his behalf crashed over him and then faded away into nothingness. He knew the mark would fade away, knew it very well.

The feeling like he was slowly, endlessly, draining away stopped eventually. He learned to breath around the wound in his chest without losing everything he was accidentally, without even realizing he was doing it, or maybe he’d just finally run empty.

He became so used to the constant hurt that he adjusted and one morning he woke up and it wasn’t there anymore.

He thought about Marco and didn't feel like he was inhaling glass. Remembered his touch and his scent and didn't collapse in on himself. His heart didn't seize and break when he realized the memories were getting fuzzy around the edges, that Marco was slipping between his fingers like water, and he didn't desperately try to cling to them.

One day he would wake up and there would be nothing at all, save an empty body. 

Or maybe that was already the case and he just couldn't tell the difference. 

**Author's Note:**

> ...yeah. That's it. I don't see any potential for anything resembling a happy ending here.
> 
> If you want to come and maybe talk me out of it next time I'm in a funky mood I've got a tumblr here: http://acharyadiako.tumblr.com/


End file.
